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Canadian home sales climb higher in May

OTTAWA, June 17, 2013 /CNW/ - According to statistics released today by
The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), national home sales
improved in May 2013, building on gains recorded in the previous two
months.

Highlights:

National home sales rose 3.6% from April to May.

Actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity came in 2.6% below levels in
May 2012.

The number of newly listed homes was up 1.9% from April to May.

The Canadian housing market remains firmly in balanced territory.

The national average sale price rose 3.7% on a year-over-year basis in
May.

The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) rose 2.3% year-over-year in May.

The number of home sales processed through the MLS® Systems of real
estate Boards and Associations and other cooperative listing systems in
Canada rose 3.6 per cent on a month-over-month basis in May 2013, its
largest monthly gain in almost two and a half years.

The increase lifted national activity almost to where it had been just
before new mortgage rules came into force last summer, marking the
first noteworthy increase in the past nine months.

Home sales improved in two-thirds of all local markets in May. This list
encompasses almost all large urban markets including Greater Vancouver,
Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Greater Toronto, Hamilton-Burlington,
Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax-Dartmouth.

"While sales improved in sync among the vast majority of local markets
in May, the fact remains that all real estate is local," said CREA
President Laura Leyser. "Your REALTOR® is your best resource for
understanding how the housing market is shaping up where you live or
might like to."

"Until recently, mixed sales trends across the country taken together
had resulted consistently in a stable national trend," said Gregory
Klump, CREA's Chief Economist. "The difference in May was that sales
improved in so many markets at the same time."

"The pop in Canada's resale housing numbers adds one more to a series of
upbeat economic indicators that exceeded expectations in recent weeks.
It's important not to put too much stock in one month's worth of data,
but taken together with other recently published economic gauges,
Canadian resale housing market results provide further evidence of the
widely anticipated firming trend for Canadian economy."

Actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity came in 2.6 per cent below
levels reported in May 2012, with transactions down on a year-over-year
basis in about 60 per cent of local markets.

The number of newly listed homes rose 1.9 per cent month-over-month in
May. New listings were up in about two-thirds of all local markets, led
by a rebound in non-CMA regions in Quebec, as well as by gains in the
Fraser Valley, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Greater Toronto.

With a larger increase in sales than new listings, the national
sales-to-new listings ratio rose to 51.4 per cent in May compared to
50.6 per cent in April. This measure has remained firmly rooted in
balanced market territory since early 2010 and has held within short
reach of 50 per cent since August 2011. Based on a sales-to-new
listings ratio of between 40 to 60 per cent, two-thirds of all local
markets were in balanced market territory in May.

The number of months of inventory is another important measure of
balance between housing supply and demand. It represents the number of
months it would take to completely liquidate current inventories at the
current rate of sales activity.

Nationally, there were 6.4 months of inventory at the end of May 2013.
This indicates that the national housing market firmed slightly
compared to a reading of 6.6 months at the end of April. Provinces
where the number of months of inventory declined include British
Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average price for homes
sold in April 2013 was $388,910, an increase of 3.7 per cent from the
same month last year.

For almost two years now, declining sales activity in Greater Vancouver
has exerted a downward pull on the national average sale price. May
2013 marks a departure from that trend, with activity in Greater
Vancouver having boosted the national average price for the first time
since August 2011.

The MLS® Home Price Index (MLS® HPI) is not affected by changes in the
mix of sales the way that average price is. For that reason, it
provides the best gauge of Canadian home price trends.

This month, Ottawa joins the HPI. With this addition, the index now
includes data from 8 real estate boards (Greater Vancouver, Fraser
Valley, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Greater Toronto, Greater Montreal
and now Ottawa), representing approximately 50% of all Canadian resale
housing activity.

The Aggregate Composite MLS® HPI rose 2.3 per cent on a year-over-year
basis in May, up marginally compared to the 2.2 per cent increase
reported in April. While this interrupted the string of diminishing
year-over-year gains posted over the past eleven months, it was still
the slowest rate of price growth in more than two years with the
exception of slightly lower readings in March and April 2013.

Year-over-year price growth advanced for all Benchmark property types
tracked by the index. Price gains remained strongest for single family
homes (+2.8 per cent), followed by townhouse/row units (+1.9 per cent),
and apartment units (+1.1 per cent).

Year-over-year price growth in the MLS® HPI was mixed across the markets
tracked by the index.

PLEASE NOTE: The information contained in this news release combines
both major market and national MLS® sales information from the previous
month.

CREA cautions that average price information can be useful in
establishing trends over time, but does not indicate actual prices in
centres comprised of widely divergent neighbourhoods or account for
price differential between geographic areas. Statistical information
contained in this report includes all housing types.

MLS® is a co-operative marketing system used only by Canada's real
estate Boards to ensure maximum exposure of properties listed for sale.

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) is one of Canada's largest
single-industry trade associations, representing more than 106,000
REALTORS® working through more than 90 real estate Boards and
Associations.